Image source, Getty Images

Equipment rental company Ashtead said pre-tax profits climbed 21% to £927m in the last year.

Chief executive Geoff Drabble said rental revenue increased 21% to £3.4bn and that "the board continues to look to the medium term with confidence".

The company owns Sunbelt rentals, which has 712 stores in the US and Canada, and A Plant, which has 187 stores in the UK.

The dividend for the year will be 33p, up 20%.

McCarthy & Stone, which builds retirement homes has warned that since April there has been a "noticeable decline in reservation rates as potential customers have exercised more caution due to ongoing economic uncertainty, a slower secondary market and a softening of pricing, particularly in the South East".

So the company now expects annual profits, external of between £65m and £80m, previously it had been expecting between £91m and £108m.

(Its financial year ends 31 August)

The company has begun a review of its business strategy.

Image source, Debenhams

Grim news from Debenhams.

The company has lowered its pre-tax profit forecast for the current financial year to between £35m and £40m.

The market had been expecting £50.3m.

"Against a background of increased competitor discounting and weakness in key markets, trading in May and early June has been below plan despite weak comparatives," the company has said in a trading statement., external

Debenhams financial year ends at the end of August.

Image source, Getty Images

Bloomberg reports that a disgruntled Tesla employee hacked into the systems which operate the company's factories and sent "highly senstive" data to third parties.

That's according to an email from company chief executive Elon Musk that was sent to staff and Bloomberg has got hold of.

There is a long list of organisations "that want Tesla to die", Mr Musk says in the email.

He also said that a small fire on the manufacturing line was a "strange incident".

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, Getty Images

In the wake of the CYBG takeover of Virgin Money, the Today Programme puts the spotlight on the challenger banks. What progress have they made?

Tom Blomfield, chief executive at Monzo says: "The way traditional banks think about their businesses is quite different to the way we think.

"Traditional banks really focus on balance sheets and very capital intensive products, like mortgage lending. Some of the challengers are really more focused on providing a service to customers. It’s about the day-to-day experience," he says.

Bridget Rosewall, chairman of Atom Bank, adds: "Scale is less important when you don’t have that huge legacy of scale that the old banks have. We’ve seen bank mergers now for decades and none of it has produced much benefit for customers."

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, Reuters

The auditing work of the world's "Big Four" accounting firms is not good enough according to the industry's watchdog.

It picked out KPMG in particular, where audits had shown an "unacceptable deterioration" and will be subject to closer supervision, the Financial Reporting Council said. But the problems are across the Big Four - which also includes PwC, EY and Deloitte.

Stephen Hadrill, chief executive officer of the Financial Reporting Council, tells the BBC's Today Programme, that there needs to be a major improvement in the quality of work.

He says: "We've seen a reversal over the last year across all the major firms and particularly at KPMG."

He says the regulator had looked at the auditing of banks and found that work on loan-loss provisions needed to be better.

He adds that they also found problems in the auditing of pension liabilities.

BBC Radio 5 live

Image source, Pure Gym

The chief executive of Pure Gym, Humphrey Cobbold told Wake Up to Money that it seems "a little bit strange" to tax gym membership when the government wants more people to get fit.

He would like to gym membership to be exempt from VAT.

"Price is the single most important thing for people, particularly in some of the lower earning echelons.

"If you go to some of the more challenging housing estates and industrial areas. That's where people need real help and it would be great to see a bit of targeted help."

BBC Radio 5 live

Image source, AFP

More than 60,000 customers went without water for over 12 hours in hte UK because of the effects of severe weather earlier in the year. A further 200,000 had no supply for more than four hours.

That's according to the Thaw Report by the water sector Watchdog Ofwat.

Ofwat chief executive Rachel Fletcher said: "Several companies really let their customers down badly. Not enough planning, not enough good understanding of what's going on their system and fundamentally really poor communications as well.

"The industry as a whole really needs to step up."

Image source, Getty Images

Chinese shares have been hit this morning, as trade tensions between the US and China escalate.

President Trump threatened another round of tariffs on Chinese goods, after China announced its own retaliation to a first round of US tariffs.

"Trump appears to be employing a similar tactic he used with North Korea, by blustering first in order to gain an advantage in negotiations. The problem is, such a tactic is unlikely to work with China," said Kota Hirayama, senior emerging markets economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.

The Shanghai Composite and Hong Kong's Hang Seng are down around 2%.

Japan's Nikkei 225 was 1.4% lower.

Ben Morris
Business reporter

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